Rain
by blueashke
Summary: It rained the day I died. Not that I was really very aware of it. I only passed a window momentarily, and I had other things on my mind, like you. It rained the day you died, too.


**A/N: Most of the notes come at the end. I'm sorry now if this sets off triggers - graphic violence of both physical and sexual nature. As you may have guessed by the description/first few sentences - character death.**

It rained the day I died. Not that I was really very aware of it. I only passed a window momentarily, and I had other things on my mind, like you. It rained the day you died, too. In a way, it's fitting really. Wasn't it all because of the rain? Well... no. It wasn't. But if there hadn't been any rain, neither one of us might have died like that.

The rain changed from a light mist ('Which should only serve to hydrate you through osmosis and therefore is preferable to sunshine since it means you need fewer water breaks!' Coach used to say) to a downpour just moments after warm ups had finished. With Regionals in only a few days, Coach let us go early, just so we wouldn't get sick. You only lived a few blocks from school and had walked that morning. When you didn't follow me to my car, I stopped and asked you why. You told me to go home and get dressed up, that you'd be by soon to take advantage of our extra two hours, but you needed to get something.

I wonder what it was you wanted to get. I never did find out. Is it funny that in the last moment before I died, that's what I thought of? I've romanticized it a thousand times in a million ways. A cutesy stuffed animal (a secret and not so secret love of both of ours), a song you wrote me, a ring. Hell I don't know, it could have been a fresh tampon because you knew I only had pads at my house. Oh great, now I'm thinking about that. Not that time means much anymore.

You never even made it to the house. Those boys... when did Lima get a big enough underbelly that we had genuine gangs? Lima Heights Adjacent jokes aside, how did it come to this in our small town? I don't care that the DNA only said three did those things. I knew later. I knew it was all of them. Just some of them were smarter or luckier than others. Well, not in the end I suppose.

When you never showed up, I called your cell phone. You'd left your bluetooth on with the auto answer triggered. They must have knocked it out of your ear, but I could... I could hear them. And you. I could hear the love of my life screaming my name out, begging them to stop, begging for me to save you, to forgive you for not stopping them. And I heard them laugh and call you filthy names that you'd whispered to me in the heat of our moments together, in happier times. I heard you stop fighting back eventually, though the moans I kept hearing told me you were still at least a bit conscious.

I heard one call out to another by name - 'Marcus' - and then I realized I'd just witnessed your attack and had done NOTHING. I'd been so caught up in crying while I listened that I'd failed to call 911 or anything. I would be told later that I'd been in shock, but it was still my job to fix it. I dashed downstairs and called the police on my house phone to tell them what I'd heard, where I thought you'd be, everything except the name. The name was for me.

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The funeral was awful. The fact that the police hadn't found even suspects was worse. It's not like you see on tv, you know. DNA helps, but you still have to get the full process DONE, and that takes time. And even once they had the profiles, if they didn't have anything to match it to, it did no good. But still I held that name in my head.

School ended. I didn't notice. The world was a blur, and the only thing that mattered was finding out who Marcus was. Our childhood spy sessions paid off now as I remembered how much fun we'd had recreating Harriet the Spy, Encyclopedia Brown, and Nancy Drew in the summers. The right questions asked, a sultry look when it was called for, the full-out innocent teenager act at another time, all of it came together to lead me at last to the gang's hideout.

Look at that sounding all badass. Their 'hideout' was Marcus' older brother Leo's house next to the hardware store he owned. And honestly, all I had to do to get in was pick out one of the guys I saw coming and going from there most days and let him think I was into him. You and I practiced that when we were 12. Make the right boy react, get a little further in the game. Neither of us really cared that much about it, but we were supposed to, and in time we did care, if only because we bent to peer pressure. So I smiled at one and gave him the idea that I was ready and willing to be his 'old lady.'

Did I ever tell you that he actually USED that line on me? Crazy, right?

After that it was a matter of getting Mitch to bring me out as a party favor. I wasn't proud of what I had to whisper in his ear while he used the body you'd so lovingly caressed the last night you'd been with me. But it guaranteed that it'd be just me and them. And it was only going to last a short while, anyway. So when I walked out of the back bedroom wearing nothing but lipstick and glitter, carrying a tray with salt, lime, and a big bottle of tequila, they were all very excited.

I'd thought about it. I couldn't poison the tequila. One, that'd just be too easy. I needed them to SUFFER for what they did to you. Two, what would happen if they made me drink? So I took the sleeping pills a thoughtful doctor had prescribed me and crushed them up with the salt. Easy to tell them that no, I didn't want it to mess up my lipstick. They weren't the sharpest tools in the shed, after all. One by one, they dropped off, each one thinking that the last one who passed out had just had too much to drink, declaring himself the current winner in a game that really, they all were going to lose at.

Motivation and anger both combine really well with adrenaline. By the time they woke up, I had every single one of them out of his pants and zip tied to something as well as themselves. The hardware store was closed, and no one else lived nearby. They could cry out; I didn't care. I did take the time to fit each one with ear plugs though. Just for shits and giggles. Not to mention it made it harder to keep their stories straight.

Leo was the first to wake. I'd recognized his voice the moment I heard it - he was the one speaking to Marcus on the phone. I knew he was guilty. When his eyes opened and he realized his situation, he at first grinned at me. After all, I was still naked, and the important parts of him were exposed. 'Kinky,' he began. When he realized that he couldn't really hear himself, he got an odd look on his face, as if he couldn't quite understand why that was. Since I did want him to hear me, I reached forward and pulled them out, a process that brought a good portion of my very female body into proximity with his very male body. That part of him jerked to attention almost as if it were on a string. His grin increased tenfold until I stepped back. 'What's with the s and m shit? I mean, I like it, but what the fuck?' he asked.

I decided that I didn't really need to ask him anything after all. I knew he was one of the guilty ones. One of the others could tell me who else had participated and who had just watched. Hell maybe some had only heard about it later. Didn't matter. Come to think of it, I didn't really want to hear his voice at all anymore.

So I cut out his tongue.

I was glad of the ear plugs then. They didn't really do much but they definitely scared the boys more. I walked away from Leo to the second body I'd seen awaken. A tall and buff high school dropout, I'd only been introduced to him as Zee, I was glad he'd been awake sooner than some. I didn't know if he'd attacked her, but I knew he was one of the few that might actually get out of the zipties (I'd used three, but still), so I needed to deal with him first. Once again, I found myself without the desire to do any questioning. So I cut a few veins. I wanted him weakened, but I wanted to revel in his suffering. His Achille's heel assured his immobility, and I was on to the next one.

Really, I should have gotten around to questioning at least a couple. But each time I approached one of the now awake and uncooperative bodies, I had a new reason to not bother. I'll admit it got repetitive. Tendon here, tongue there, a stab to a thigh once when Jay-dog (seriously? You're white, 15, and living in Lima, Ohio) managed to snap the ziptie on his ankles and I missed. He bled out before I could get back to pay more attention to him. Guess I got the artery. Oops.

Eventually they were all relatively quiet, mostly because they were in shock from the loss of blood. Or, you know, the loss of a tongue. I walked back to the center of the room and gave them a dramatic little speech. Rachel Berry would have been proud. 'Three months ago you found my girlfriend alone on a street. I don't even know if she said anything to you or why you did it. But you raped her. And you killed her. And now you are going to pay.'

Oh, and pay they did. Different body parts make different sounds when they are dismembered. An eyeball pops. Balls deflate. Nipples are a weird as fuck texture when separated from normal skin. Dicks become even more pathetic, especially when shoved into the mouth (with or without tongue) of the person laying NEXT to the one losing it. Somehow that seemed to upset them all even more, that I wasn't shoving dicks into their owner's mouths. It didn't really matter to me, but it was entertaining.

I saved Marcus for last. I'd learned that he was indeed the leader during my first visit. Therefore, he had the most to pay, even if he hadn't been the one to start things. He got special treatment. Did you know that guys don't like to have their legs shaved, especially not with a blade that's not exactly angled correctly? Marcus didn't like it. He didn't like it when I painted his toes. Maybe it was the fact that I used his brother's blood to do it. He didn't like it when I carved your name into his stomach. And he really, really didn't like it when I took the rest of the salt and poured it all over the letters.

I think he liked my idea for his new belt even less. That's what he gets for having such a long small intestine. It fit around several times.

By the time he died, the sun was starting to come up. I stood in the middle of the room one final time. I was naked save for the blood of the men who killed you. In that moment I knew that I wasn't going to run. I wasn't going to plead insanity or justifiable homocide. I did what I needed to do.

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The trial wasn't very long. I wasn't sorry, and I wouldn't say so. I didn't deny doing it. The prosecution kept pointing out that I'd had the name from the moment you died. If I'd told the police, they'd have caught all of them, and no one else would have died. They'd have gone to jail. But the fact that I'd planned from then showed clear premeditation. And premeditated mass murder carried with it a death sentence.

Female or not, young or not, the state had declared me incorrigible. Nothing more could be done. I could not be rehabilitated. It was funny, because all the killing had gone out of me, but it didn't really matter to me.

The process took years, as it was wont to do. Quinn, of all people, became an attorney and tried so very hard to get me out. She never believed that I didn't want to. She didn't understand that I couldn't kill myself, but I desparately just wanted to be reunited with you. A few of the others visited me at times, but the weirdest thing was that every last one of the club members came to see me when I died.

Can you imagine? Taking those final steps to the table on which you're going to close your eyes for the last time and realizing that through the window is everyone who saw you transform from someone they thought they knew into a killer? I never got the chance to ask them why they came. Maybe it was because they understood at last that we were going to be together.

As they asked me for my last words, I looked out at my old friends. 'Don't cry for me. Sing for us. Sing for her.' The doctor looked at me strangely, then at a nod from the guards, they read the last of the condemning documentation, and the first button was pushed. The second. And at last, the third.

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In the final week before I died, Quinn had presented me with the small amount of success she'd had - my body was to be interred next to yours. Finally we would no longer be separated. Side by side, we'd spend eternity together.

Have you looked at it? They used only one gravestone.

Santana Maria Lopez Brittany Susan Pierce  
>June 7, 1994 - March 8, 2012 June 6, 1994 - May 17, 2025<br>And I love you, I love you, I love you, like never before.

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**A/N: My internet went down today when I was trying to catch up on all I'd missed being out of town the weekend before the season premiere. Rather than be productive, I started reading the fic tabs I'd had open when it went out. One had Brittany dying and people commenting on the fact that she's always the one to die. I did my best to write this in such a way that you didn't know who the speaker was. I'd love feedback on it. Were you surprised? Did you have to go back and reread it from Brittany's perspective? Can you believe she could do this? Did you like it? Hate it? I love reviews, good or bad.**


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